The Watcher believes a new low for English RL is about to happen, it will occur when we get beat by PNG in the current 4 nations tournament. England will obviously get battered by the convicts on Sunday morning & then in complete humiliation we will be beaten by PNG on the 5th Nov. We are now further away from Australia then we have ever been & its all down to, the so called. super league. What a waste of nearly 15 years, the whole lot of them should resign, they have taken us backwards its as simple as that.

Tell you what Watcher, if PNG beat England, i'll donate £20 to the Steve Prescott foundation, if England beat PNG, you have to stop talking in the third person.

, he's talking about his imaginary friend

He used to have an imaginary friend, but he died of boredom.

no way, ENGLAND are mostly SOOPER LEAGUE PLAYERS !!!

PNG will not beat England. The Watcher should not drink Absinthe, its not good for you.

YEAH, THINK YOU'RE RIGHT. KIWI'S PUT 76 PAST THEM THIS MORNING.

jonny the leyther believes the watcher bottled his bet.

The L3YTH thinks we will get battered by the convicts and will have had another hugely embarassing tournament. The L3YTH thinks super league is a joke and our game is no better than it was 15 years ago.
The L3YTH thinks the team that won a game in Oz, years back with Andy Greg, Phil Ford, Henderson Gill et all, would have beaten the current England team.

Paul Atcheson represented Great Britain 13 years ago mate, not exactly Billy Slater is he?

oh my god its contagious.. wbk666 thinks he best get some medication ready... oh no wbk666 thinks he may have cought it now

England are the third best RL side in the World and the 4 Nations will illustrate that already well-known fact.

The introduction of SL and/or franchising was never going to affect that.

It was meant to though, that was the biggest 'spin' put on its formation

Pre SL how many series were lost v NZ?, I always had us as 2nd best!!!

Pre SL what were the gates at Wembley, Elland rd, OT etc for test matches v Aus

How many backs do we now have of the calibre of Offiah, Edwards, Hanley, Schofield, Gregory, Hunte, Drummond, Gill, Woods, Newlove etc

SL has taken the game backwards, it has split the sport and reduced the player pool.

You have hit the nail on the head. The reduction in the player pool has put us in the position of having an awful England team. SL was supposed to improve our game. Stopping P&R was supposed to enable teams to develop youth without the fear of relegation.
What complete bull poop. We are going backwards. I find Super League generally boring and have complete apathy towards the international game.
NONE of the current England team is fit to lace the boots of the likes of Ellery Hanley, Shaun Edwards or Andy Gregory.
We haven't produced a decent scrum half or stand off for years.
I expect the convicts to run up atleast 50 points and won't be surprised when we lose to Wales in next years tournament. At least that will give the super league heirarchy vindication for having a team in Wrexham.
The whole sport is a joke run by muppets and clowns.

Hunte wouldn't get in this England side because he was garbage. We also used to play against Australia, not the Australiasia XIII and a NZ team without a pro team of any real substance until the NZ Warriors emerged from the Aukland Warriors.

Another point is this is very much an England team with backs looking towards the nexy RLWC with an average age of 22.

We have gone backwards, the 3 years without relegation is not helping youth just giving more money to old Aussies. Previously decent players who got promoted and then relegated would have been given a chance with a club that stayed/went up, now hardly any Champ players get a chance in SL and all the juniors are cherry picked by SL clubs. When we had P&R young players would stay local if their team was in with a chance of promotion now they go to SL, the idea SL promotes youth is rubbish.

Sorry, bit of a rant there.

Don't forget folks that we are only England now and not GB. I know GB was nearly all England but there is still a smaller player base. Having said that I truly believe that our leagues need to reduce the overseas quota to 4 player from non gb countries and sod this colpac and your great grandparrents sister was british. If you weren't born in the british isles or you don't have a parent or grand parent the was born in the british isles then you are a foreign player. It is true that we were a stronger game without this many overseas players.

No it's not.

Salford have played far more youngsters in the first team, and recruited far less foreigners, over the last 2 years because there was no threat of relegation.

I suspect the same may well be true of Wigan (except the relegation bit?!) and they've just won SL.

I'm also fairly sure that the current England squad are far younger than previous England/GB teams (especially in the backs).

There are LOTS of fault with SL (and especially franchising) but failure to promote youth is not one of them IMHO.

Who gives a toss? International RL is just another reason the RFL can give for expansion its Bulletc .

Go back to tours every few years put money into RL in the heartlands and get clubs like us Fax Fev back up into competing like they used to.

WE WILL NEVER BEAT THE AUSSIES!

Bitter or not about P&R, it was supposed to aid the development of English players and yet our national side is the worst I've seen for 30 years.

I get the feeling that some people would endorse a complete return to semi pro leagues if it meant they got to see their club in the top flight next year. Your living in the past, international competitions when done correctly make tonnes of money, money is what keeps this sport alive. If there were no Superleague then within fifteen years all the RL teams in England would just be small feeder teams with a few hundred people watching them around a roped off field, all the talent would go to much bigger and wealthier northern RU clubs.

People have to take into account why New Zealand have overtaken England. New Zealand Warriors themselves are an expansion club, they are very competitive in the NRL and export a lot of domestic talent to NRL sides. New Zealand's players play in a higher intensity competition (the NRL) than Superleague week in week out. New Zealand is a Rugby country and all the school kids who are interested in sport over there will grow up wanting to be Rugby players.

We've always had the odds stacked against us in England. Soccer is our national sport, Rugby League is played in a small geographic area and doesn't feature very highly in the national consciousness. Contrast this with RU who have amateur clubs everywhere in the country and a large player pool. It's not that Superleague sent us backwards, it's that the rise of New Zealand Warriors and the export of NZ players to the NRL propelled their international team forwards.

Well I agree with Dan and I have seen an England side beat the Aussies.

Maybe the way forward is to have a limit on the number of players a team has without a British passport. Our footie team is shocking at the international level for the same reason.